I want to apply ED to either Tufts or Duke but I can’t pick! I like the environment of Tufts better, it’s more laid back. Tufts seems more strongly liberal arts. I want to be able to take a variety of classes outside of my major. Tufts is also very close to home. I used to want to be close to home, but I don’t care either way now. I want to major in science and minor in business (but maybe switch my major to business if I like it enough) and Tufts only offers a minor in business (I don’t want to major in Econ). Academically, Duke is better. Duke has more opportunities to get involved inside and outside of the Duke community. I’m not as drawn to the work hard party hard atmosphere at Duke. My mom went to Duke, so I have legacy there, but Duke is extremely competitive and with a 3.6 GPA and a 30 ACT, I’m not sure legacy will help me enough to get in. I have a lot of connections at Duke, which would help me in the admissions process. One of my parents works at Tufts, so I have that to help me in that aspect there. I can’t decide what school I want to go to! I’m scared of wasting my ED on one school and wishing I did ED to the other. I used to be set on Tufts as my ED school, but I keep seeing over and over again how Duke is ranked among the ivies. Any advice?
Personally, I think that the academic difference between these two is negligible. They both draw from the same pool of excellent students. The vibe of the campuses is quite different, though, and if Tufts feels right to you, that’s probably a sign that it is. If one has a program you want and the other doesn’t, that’s a different issue, but if rank is the only thing making you second guess yourself, stick with Tufts.
What are your extracurriculars? With a 30 ACT and 3.6 GPA, you will have a hard time getting in ED to either schools unless you are a recruited athlete. IMO, Tufts > Duke though.
Apply ED to whichever school you prefer. Your ACT is low for both.
Neither Duke nor Tufts list “business” as a major or minor.
Both Tufts and Duke offer a minor in Finance (which is a specialty within Economics)
Tufts also offers a a minor in Entrepreneurial Leadership (sponsored by the Gordon Institute within Engineering). It is the most popular minor for liberal arts students at Tufts.
Duke is a big fish in a small pond: think about how many name-brand selective colleges there are in the Southeast compared to the Northeast! Tufts has more competitors within the Boston metro area than Duke does in the entire southeast.
On top of that, Duke does more marketing than Tufts, so you will always hear and see more about it.
Trust yourself: if your visceral response says that one place feels more like you, listen.
“Academically, Duke is better. Duke has more opportunities to get involved inside and outside of the Duke community.”
Both of these statements are false. Both schools are broadly in the same tier: what you get out of the college experiences at each place will partly reflect the differences between them - but will be much, much, much more affected by what you do with your time in college.
Here is some data that might help you decide
How much each University spends on Each Student
Duke
Instruction $55,215
Student services $3,066
Academic support $5,377
Ops & maintenance $4,028
Institutional support $8,776
Tufts
Instruction $18,900
Student services $2,752
Academic support $11,126
Ops & maintenance $2,546
Institutional support $4,761
** Demographics and 6 yr Graduation rates by Race**
** Duke**
Race % of Students Grad rates
White students 51.6 % 95.2 %
Black students 9.0 % 95.4 %
Hispanic students 6.7 % 92.0 %
Asian students 19.6 % 95.8 %
Tufts
White students 60.9 % 94.4 %
Black students 3.4 % 84.1 %
Hispanic students 6.3 % 82.7 %
Asian students 11.3 % 94.4 %
These are two very different schools, I would argue in very different tiers. If you are going to spend the same amount of money at either school, then you need to start looking at hard numbers.
Startclass, which is usually up to date, has demographic info that makes these schools look much more comparable. If this is factoring into your decision, definitely verify. But for sure, Duke’s endowment is much larger (and this has an impact on rankings). Again, you should see if the spending aligns with your interests.
Looking at the wrong numbers is worse than not looking at the numbers at all…
From the latest IPEDs database Tufts 4 year graduation rate is 88% vs 86% for Duke.
For 6 year graduation rate, Duke is 95% vs. 93% for Tufts.
The detailed 6 year breakdown is listed in this source and it is also different from what you posted.
http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=tufts&s=all&id=168148
You also need to understand the numbers you are looking at.
You did not list your source, but what I think you will find is that “Each Student” includes grad students, which tend to be much more expensive than undergrads. Graduate programs determine prestige, not undergrad, and schools seeking prestige and higher rankings spend accordingly. The cost per student is also a function of major. A higher mix of pre-professional and science majors is more expensive than a higher mix humanities and arts students.
In terms of measuring a school by spending - if spending translated directly into performance, the New York Yankees would have won the World Series every year rather than ending up closer to last place the last few years…
What a school chooses to spend it’s money on defines it more than the total amount spent.
From IPEDs database linked to above:
SAT CR Tufts 680/750 Duke 670/760
SAT M Tufts 690/770 Duke 690/790
These are pretty much identical showing a slight skew consistent with the relative mix of majors…
Note that Duke chooses to spend money on merit scholarships to attract high stat students and Tufts chooses to spend money on loan relief for graduates that go into careers in public service.
I guess you could say that this would put the schools in two different “tiers”…
OP, Tufts has ED1 and ED2, so if Duke is really your top choice and Tufts is really your second choice then you can apply to Duke for ED1, and then be prepared to submit to Tufts as ED2. I do not know if there is any difference in benefit between Tufts ED1 and ED2.
ED1 has more benefit than ED2 as a large portion of the class is already filled by ED1
In ED2 you are also competing against all the students who applied to HYPSM early, as well as other ED schools.
@Mastadon Those numbers are from IPEDS data from 2012, but I find it strange that you bemoan the aggregation of graduate and undergraduate students for the purposes of calculating instructional spending, but have no issues presenting aggregated graduation rates. Also note that according to the Carnegie Classification, Tufts is classified as a research university with Very high Research activity, the same classification as Duke.
The simple fact is both are considered research universities but Duke spends more per student on instruction and has a substantially better 6 year graduation rate for URM’s. Now I don’t know whether that matters to the OP, but the data is what it is. You can even compare Tufts’ instructional spending with a college like Dartmouth and Dartmouth outspends Tufts on its instruction. Just in Massachusetts Williams, Wellesley, Boston University, Smith, Amherst and Brandeis also spend more than Tufts on instruction per student as per the 2012 data.
Maybe Tufts has found a secret sauce to be much more efficient that all these other universities even though it spends less on educating its students. I don’t know or claim to know what the answer is. That is for the OP to research and find out.
I did look up some numbers for 2014 and the differences remain
For African Americans the 6 yr grad rate at Duke was 92% while it was 84% at Tufts.
For Hispanics it is Duke: 96% Tufts 89%
Duke also has a substantially bigger endowment than Tufts and is a much richer school. Endowment per student for Duke is around $388K while for Tufts it is only $143K.
Duke also pays its full time instructional staff approximately 30% more on average ($103K vs $134K). These things matter, at least in my eyes, specially if you consider that Tufts is in a higher cost metro than Duke. So the differential is probably even more.
These two schools are clearly not in the “Same Tier”. Tufts might be a better fit for the OP, but that would be the OP’s decision.
Tufts has EDII so if you dont get into Duke ED, you could theoretically apply EDII to Tufts. However, i recommend applying early where you truly would love to go
They are in roughly the same tier in terms of academics. OP stated categorically that “Academically, Duke is better”. I disagree that any difference in the standard of academics is a meaningful metric for the OP in choosing where to apply.
For what it’s worth, OP, I’d say that if you really can’t decide between the two, you shouldn’t apply to either one ED. In which case you can beat yourself up about not applying to one of them ED if you don’t get into one of them RD 
Right now, your post reads as you liking the feel of Tufts better, but seeing more possible academic opportunities and “involvement” possibilities at Duke. So, do some research. What specific opportunities are available at Duke that you would regret not having if you attend Tufts? How do the academics–the classes, the opportunities for research, professor reviews, etc etc etc–stack up between the two schools? See if that makes the decision easier for you.
You should also ask your high school’s college counselor if she/he has any insight on how students with your GPA and test scores have fared in applying to the two schools.
6 yr graduation data reported in 2012 is really old. Those students matriculated over a decade ago!
I supplied the link to all the latest graduation data (which is 2015 reported data) here are the latest minority graduation rates:
6yr graduation rate
African American Tufts 96% Duke 93%
Hispanic Tufts 93% Duke 94%
So, Tufts now has a better 6yr URM graduation rate than Duke (although the difference is statistically insignificant) - The rise in the minority graduation rate at Tufts is due to two “new” programs called BLAST and BEST that were implemented around seven years ago.
http://as.tufts.edu/BLAST/
http://engineering.tufts.edu/best/
Quite frankly, I would consider the four year graduation rate much more important than the 6 year graduation rates given the actual and/or opportunity cost of the extra 2 years. It is also hard to argue that Tufts’ 4 year graduation being 2% higher than Duke’s will make any measurable difference in a given applicant’s ability to graduate on time.
Note that based on your data, Tufts has over twice the “student support” spending of Duke - whatever that is. The problem is that we have no idea what any of these categories include.
In terms of salaries:
“Full time instructional staff” typically includes all professors across all schools. In some cases, though, professional schools may not be included if they do not offer undergrad classes. Sometimes professors with Phds and professional degrees straddle two schools. Engineering, Business, Law and Medicine have different salary structures than Liberal Arts and that tends to dwarf regional differences. You would need to know which disciplines are included and take a weighted average across the disciplines to compare. A friend of mine who is a Finance professor gets paid over $350K. Law professors can also be paid very well.
In academia, pay is also tied to research activity not undergrad teaching. So, even if there were no professional schools there could be a large salary difference based on research activity which may actually be inversely correlated with undergraduate academic quality. Professors who bring in millions in research revenue justifiably get paid more than those that don’t. But they tend to spend their time writing research proposals and conducting/supervising the research, not teaching undergrads.
At Tufts, the highest rated professors are often “lecturers” who are recruited based on teaching ability. They get paid less than the full professors who bring in significant research revenue and they also tend to teach more courses per semester because they are not spending as much time on research.
All in all, attempting to attach meaning to average faculty salary is even more difficult that attaching meaning to the average salary of graduates
For reference, here is a table of salaries by rank and region (but not by area of expertise):
https://www.higheredjobs.com/documents/salary/region_category_rank_16.pdf
In terms of Carnegie Classification:
The “Very High” research classification is a very, very broad category. The formula is based on a combination of metrics around research and the production of Phd graduates.
Based on NSF data:
Tufts spends $160M on research and Duke spends over $1B - that is more than a 6x difference.
It takes a lot of “spending per student” to support $1B in graduate research and there is no way to know how much of this is included in the numbers you are quoting…
https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?method=rankingBySource&ds=herd
So, Tufts and Duke ARE very much on different tiers when it comes to the amount of RESEARCH spending.
The problem is that there is no way to tell from spending data how much of the spending supports graduate research/education and how much of it supports undergraduate research/education. Even if you could derive this number, you would then have to account for the mix in majors. And then it comes down to which majors are of actual interest to you.
@Mastadon I pulled directly from the IPEDS database and they still don’t have the 2015 numbers on graduation rates. 2014 is the latest. I know navigator shows the new numbers, but the IPEDs data pull doesn’t. If your numbers are true, then Tufts has indeed made investments to improve the success of minority students. That is good.
We will have to agree to disagree on the pay. The fact is that schools that offer better pay to their teaching staff will attract better talent in general. You are speculating on why there might be a pay difference without actually showing that any of the speculative reasons you have cited are Actually driving the difference. I also find your assertion that teaching and research talent are orthogonal to each other bizarre and condescending. Some of my best teachers in college were also great research scholars. That is what made them special and they usually were recognized as such.
Also you want to deliberately section off graduate research and instructional spending from undergraduate spending by implying that it has no bearing on the undergraduate experience, which I strongly disagree with. Today many many undergraduates undertake research work while they are students and they benefit greatly from the labs, funding and insights of the faculty members engaging in research.
So while Tufts may have indeed erased the graduation gap for minorities, it still lags peer schools in instructional spending per student, some of whom don’t even have a strong research focus. With Duke, the differences just look that much starker because Tufts and Duke really are not peer schools. And acknowledging that fact doesn’t make Tufts a bad school
The profs at Tufts know everything the profs at Duke know. Go to Tufts and you will get all the info you can handle.
@CollegeAngst I’d take the per student spending with salt. Cornell, a top school and peer of Duke by any measure, spends LESS than Tufts in most measures. And I believe this is using the same source.
For the hard sciences, Duke is stronger than Tufts. The caliber of students is higher. The graduate programs are ranked higher, meaning the undergrad program is also likely more rigorous. But if you’d be a better fit at Tufts, that won’t hinder you from getting in to a good graduate school or getting a good job. Tufts is also very rigorous, but slightly less so.